5 Reasons ‘Pacific Rim’ Fails As A Kaiju Movie

Like a lot of geeks who came up during the 90s, I was briefly pretty into Japanese giant monsters (known as kaiju in their homeland). The (ultimately disappointing) Hollywood version of Godzilla was on the way, so all the classic Toho giant monster movies were re-issued on video and available at Blockbuster, and I watched every one of them I could get my hands on. Yes, they were cheesy as hell for the most part, but there was also something undeniably appealing about them.

So, needless to say, I was intrigued by the prospect of Pacific Rim — a tribute to classic kaiju movies from the guy who totally nailed Blade and Hellboy? I’m there! Unfortunately, while Pacific Rim is by no means a terrible film, it wasn’t much of a kaiju movie. Certainly not the labor-of-love tribute to giant rubber monsters I was hoping it would be. How did Pacific Rim miss the mark? Well (SPOILERS AHEAD!)…

The Monsters Have No Personality

Probably the best part of classic kaiju movies is how unique all the monsters are. They all have their own looks, origins, abilities and personalities. Nobody’s mistaking Godzilla for Rodan. Or Mothra. Or King Ghidorah. You could pick your favorites and root them on.

Pacific Rim touched on this a bit with the giant robot half of its equation — some of the robots and their pilots had unique personalities at least. I was definitely a fan of goofy-looking Russian underdog Cherno Alpha with its big cylindrical head.

The monsters on the other hand were mostly indistinguishable. With a few exceptions they all had the same “hammerhead shark” type look and behaved in the more-or-less the same way. Hell, we even find later in the movie that they’re all just clones. What’s the point in giving kaiju a fancy CGI makeover if you’re going to make them all the same?

This is one of the clearest shots I could find of the movie’s fight scenes. That says a lot.

The Fight Scenes Weren’t Right

A good kaiju fight is a pretty straightforward thing — two giant monsters duking it out in a suspiciously human-like fashion, unleashing all their best moves until one is left standing. It’s basically pro-wrestling featuring guys in rubber lizard suits. Yes, they crash through the occasional building, but they’re obvious fakes. The destruction of property isn’t the focus, those buildings are just there to set the scale. A good kaiju fight is about setting two immense forces with defined powers against each other and seeing who wins, plain and simple.

Pacific Rim actually got it right with its first big fight scene. It was just a good, stand up brawl between two behemoths (with a little bit of levity mixed in with the Jaeger having to save the fishing boat multiple times throughout the battle). I was less into the movie’s later fight scenes.

They were too focused on property damage, making them feel like typical Roland Emmerich destruction porn. The monsters were too animalistic and wild, robbing the fights of that classic kaiju “Clash of the Titans” mano-a-mano feel. The camera was too crazy and the scenes were too dark. The big fights scenes should have been the backbone of the movie, but with the exception of that first scene they were never as fun or deeply satisfying as the rubber suit ridiculousness of yesteryear.

As for the whole Kaiju thing I actually went in to the movie with completely different expectations. When I watched all the interviews with Del Toro he wasn’t talking about the influence of classic kaiju films but was instead talking about how mecha anime seemed to be his main influence. I think this is how you have to approach Pacific Rim. The ending of the movie was so evangelion it hurt (hello jesus on the cross self-sacrificing robot) and, maybe this is just because I watched it recently, but I got a pretty strong Getter-Mazinger Z vibe from the whole film. Especially towards the end when they just nuke themselves I kept thinking of Musashi’s death from the Getter Robo series. And then with the whole “strong compatibility makes the machine fight better” just seemed like a throw back to the ways the getter rays work with the getter team.

That’s mainly why I liked it so much. I’ve watched that stuff since I was a kid with my brother so THAT’S the kind of movie that I wanted to see. I think it’d be fair to say that it wasn’t really a kaiju movie and was instead an anime brought to the big screen, with all the qualities inherent in that distinction. *stuffs head in toilet flushes*

My thoughts exactly. It’s only a Kaiju movie in as far as it contains giant monsters. It more closely resembles an anime, as you said. Which, when viewed as such, one can even forgive some of the stilted or corny dialogue and one dimensional characters (one of the universal gripes most reviewers have cited). Even in the native language, no one is going to suggest that much of the dialogue in Anime is akin to Shakespearean prose.
I enjoyed the movie quite a bit.

I would agree with that entirely. To me, they’re two completely different genres that bring unique but largely incompatible tones and themes to the table. A good mecha anime can’t really be a good monster movie and vice-versa. I loved Pacific Rim because it was a good mecha movie and you seemed to (don’t wanna put words in your mouth) be disappointed because it wasn’t a good monster movie. And that’s okay, but actually FUCK YOU MY TASTES ARE BETTER THAN YOUR TASTES AND THAT MEANS ONLY ONE OF US CAN LIVE.

Nate you need to cancel your Crunchy Roll subscription.
I counted no less than 4 instances of giant monsters getting punched directly in their stupid monster faces and I seriously enjoyed all the fights. I went in wanting giant Mecha rocket punching giant monsters in the face and I left one very satisfied movie goer.
I definitely dont think they spent too much time on property destruction, it felt like there was just enough to give the brawls a proper amount of scale.

That “The Big O” style rocket punch made me legit hard. Biggest plot hole to me by far wasn’t even the inter-dimensional aliens debacle, but the fact that Gipsy Danger HAD FREAKING SWORDS THE ENTIRE TIME but the pilots only remembered after like 30 god damn minutes of punching and on the verge of dying. Read the damn manual fellas.

Yeah, I was conflicted about the sword — it was cool and all, but yeah, the glaring plot hole of why they didn’t use it before was bothersome. Also, later in the final underwater scene they were killing kaiju way too easily with it.

Oh hell yeah it was, but you for reference. A couple of you guys have given me explanations as to why the swording didn’t begin wayyyy earlier. You would think the guys in charge of making the movie would be able to do the same right?

The number 6 reason is that I was actually able to stay awake through Pacific Rim, unlike most 60s era kaiju movies – and I say that as a big fan of Godzilla. But a lot of those were snooze-fests when not delivering the goods.

But why am I not surprised that this was written by Nate – who thinks Amazing Spider-Man and Man of Steel were not only watchable, but actually *good* movies (time has not been kind to the former – everyone forgot it even exists – and history will prove me right on the latter…mwhahahaha!).

I’m just teasing. Figured someone was going to be the a-hole who pulls the “oh yeah, but you liked blah blah blah” card, figured I’m just the a-hole for the job this time :P

You nailed it with “Happy Feelings”. My wife and I both walked out of the theater saying it was good but not really very fun. Every movie had to be darker toned these days it seems. It needed more high fives, cheese and maybe even some monster chest pumping.

First off, I found Pacific Rim pretty entertaining for the most part. I didn’t hate it or anything. Nate, I gotta say I think you nailed it with this line, “When your massively budgeted 2013 movie can’t even match the depth of movies from the 60s in which a giant lizard dropkicks space dragons through cardboard skyscrapers, you’ve got a problem.”

I feel like our expectations for movies are getting dangerously low and we should be holding filmmakers’ feet to the fire a little more. Yes, even for a robot punching monster movie.

My friends and I discussed it, and the world nations clearly should’ve just used the money to build kaiju killer missiles. They’re giant missiles that track onto the kaiju’s heat signature, and the warhead is the pneumatic fist from the Russian jaeger. They’re called “Fistwinder Missiles”. Come to think of it, that pneumatic fist was the Russian jaeger’s only weapon. I’m surprised it wasn’t called “Fister Roboticus”

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and loved the action sequences: GIANT ROBOTS! That said, I pretty much hated everything about all of the human characters with the exception of Idris Elba and Ron Perlman. And, Rinko Kikuchi might have been the worst offender. Her entire character was such a ridiculous amalgamation of Asian stereotypes that I couldn’t decide whether to be angry or embarrassed whenever she was on screen. Case in point: A fucking sword comes out of Gypsy Danger’s arm and I’m mentally screaming “FUCK YEAH!” until Mako screams “For my family!” right before they cut the Kaiju in half. Ugh, just, ugh.

Well, it could have been worse — there wasn’t a single scene where she taught the main white dude how to use chopsticks. There wasn’t even a bonsai tree anywhere in her quarters! The fact that she got to be the main (and basically only) female character is pretty daring by Hollywood standards.

Speaking of Hollywood’s daring (or lack thereof) — what was with the main white dude and Rinko Kikuchi going for that weird, awkward, “head on the shoulder half-hug” at the end instead of the kiss they were pretty clearly building to? Hmmm.

@Nippo You’re probably right. The only other movie I’ve seen Rinko in was The Brothers Bloom, and I thought she was pretty great. But then again, she had no actual dialogue.

@Nate Oh, I totally agree, it could have been so much worse, but that still doesn’t mean it already isn’t bad. While I think it’s great that one of the main characters was Asian and that they got an actual Japanese actor to play a Japanese person, I just wish she wasn’t such a stereotype of how Americans perceive Japanese people to act.

I’m not surprised that the Jaeger pilots are good folks. You have a system that requires letting someone else into your mind and you’re a selfish jerk you’re not going to sign up for that. And I thought that the aliens WANTED us to pollute the Earth; that’s why they left after killing the dinosaurs because the world wasn’t polluted enough for them to survive.

It seems that it’s more mainstream to talk bad about a good sci-fi movie… I don’t see anybody talking smack about “Beasts of the Southern Wild” Which really sucked ass and was highly overrated… Film critics (am I right)

**SUPER SPOILERY** and nothing really to do with Kaiju movie gripes, but…

Seriously, I know it’s a war to prevent the apocalypse and death is pretty much a constant, but could someone even give the slightest of shits when a character died? Mako’s surrogate father and the Australian guy’s ACTUAL son are vaporized in a nuclear blast, and all we get is a 2 second shot of the dad looking sort of forlorn after bellowing “STOP THE CLOCK!” to the wildly cheering masses.

Yeah, but the scene where son and Major Stringer Bell were leaving to fight was a pretty clear goodbye scene. I mean, Stringer said going back into a Jaeger would kill him, and the son and dad had their heartfelt moment.

I kinda disagree with the first two. I think having little weapons and upgrades each time gave those later monsters a little bit of flair. At least the two that attacked Hong Kong. I would’ve like more though.

And as for the focus on property damage bit, I didn’t get that at all. I mean yeah, they went at it in a city and destroyed some buildings, but they still went at it. It would’ve been a bit silly to have them pull a DBZ/Godzilla movie fight in the most generic of wildernesses. The ocean was bad enough.

I can get behind the other notes, especially that last one. I think there could’ve been more fun too and less trans-dimensional nose flaring.

This is whole artical is a load of shit, The movie was bombastic and fun and Otachi (( The catagory four wich took out the chinese mecha)) Was memorable as hell. Besides this movie was about the Mechas, the Kaijus where the villians. Its more a giant robot movie.

I really have to disagree with this assessment, first and foremost because the “reviewer” has some pretty heavy-handed claims at what Kaiju must be and yet he doesn’t seem to hold much respect or knowledge for the subgenre. He consistently refers to the SFX in kaiju movies as hokey and “cardboard” (not a single kaiju film has cardboard buildings in it) and consistently downplays any importance or relevance the films have. He also seems to only know about Godzilla films and insinuates that because this film isn’t an exact carbon copy of older G films it is “bad kaiju cinema.”

This film has more in common with Ultraman and Ultraseven than Godzilla, IMO. And has serious gleanings of Gatchaman, Gaiking, Mazinger Z and the like.

Does it succeed as a Kaiju film? Absolutely. The Kaiju -are- unique (if you can’t tell the difference between a giant monster crab, a winged lizard-dinosaur that spits acid, a gorilla (homage to WotG), and a goblin shark then you need your eyes checked) and Leatherback and Otachi ooze personality, showcasing a giant brute and a nefarious schemer respectively.

I believe it absolutely succeeds as a Kaiju film, and pays respectful dues to its roots.

Pacific Rim was an awesome kaiju movie, and that’s coming from someone who’s been a Godzilla fan as long as he can remember. Good guy humans, convoluted plots, and monsters that are merely forces of nature instead of actual characters are all part of various Godzilla movies.

Hey Nathan!You really don’t know a thing about Pacific Rim don’t you!All the kaiju are different from one another!They just could not show all 52 of them!Only 9 kaiju were the focus in the film!But if you read about Pacific Rim long enough,you’ll see that there are 52 kaiju!I calculated in the wiki of Pacific Rim because there was an image of how many kaiju attacked!Yes,I know there were a lot of knifeheads in their homeworld,but of you look at Scunner,Trespasser,and Knifehead,you’ll see they have the same type of body!Every kaiju is different from one another!You just don’t know a single bit about Pacific Rim you asshole!Just read the Pacific Rim wiki and you’ll see!

Hey Nathan!So if you’re asking what those Knifeheads were being used for,they were being created for their bodies!Also Knifehead DOES NOT look like a hammerhead shark!Slattern aka that category 5 in the end of the movie,looks like a hammerhead shark more,not Knifehead!So yeah just look at the Pacific Rim wiki.I demand you do it NOW!!!Then you’ll see how much badass Pacific Rim is than those old school Godzilla movies!(I am a godzilla fan too,but it really looks lame during the old times because you could clearly see they are just costumes.But I think that the Godzilla movie in 2014 will be just like Pacific Rim.)So yeah just look at the wikia of Pacific Rim,and I guarantee you,you will regret making this stupid rip off shitty article in the first place!!!But yeah of course Godzilla is awesome!I’m not trying to offend you Godzilla fans out there!:) It’s just this guy doesn’t know a thing about Pacific Rim!So yeah…long live Godzilla!

You know what Nathan,this article you made dishonors us Pacofic Rim superfans and regular fans!You’re such a dumbass when it comes to Pacific Rim!!!But I do congratulate you for you’re vast knowledge of Godzilla.

But also kaiju do fight each other in Pacific Rim(If I remember correctly)First their creators and masters put them in arenas to fight to the death.The victors are unleashed into the earth to do what every kaiju does best,destroying everything in their way aside from fellow victrors(as is with Otachi,Leatherback,Raiju,Scunner,and Slattern)